The Darndest Things

C (Explaining to Eli and Si school fire drills): You have to go outside, and you can't talk, because, if you open your mouth, you will get fire in it.

Silas (at the Costco fountain pop machines): I want BEER!!!

Me (while dousing the hot dogs in ketchup): What? Did you say you wanted beer?

Silas: Yes.

Me: It's called ROOT beer, Silas. We don't drink beer. (Loud enough for all to be assured that my 4 year old doesn't drink beer.)

Silas: I call it BEER!

Silas: Mum, you got borned some really awesome kids!

Jared: Silas, come here.Silas: Me no Silas, me Si-la-guy!

Silas (pointing to bone on the side of his ankle): Mommy, rock. in. my. foot.Me: It's not a rock, it's a bone.Silas (incredible distressed): Oh no! Mommy, BONE in my foot!

Silas (when the sun went behind a cloud and the room got darker): Mommy, dark?Me: Ya, the sun just went behind a cloud.Silas, very sad: Mommy, me miss da sun.

Silas (At 1:30 in the morning after he has been sleeping terrible due to a stuffed nose): Uh ohMe: What, is your nose broken?Silas: Yup, two them broken.

Me (at dinner time): Eli, have you been wearing your t-shirt on backwards all day.Eli (without skipping a beat): No, but I've been wearing my underpants on backwards all day.

Eli (the first time he sat in his brand new, ridiculously expensive but totally safe car seat): It's like way comfortabler. It's like a pile of clouds I'm sitting on.

Eli: I know why the world turns. It's because the sun is so hot, and the world is a guy, and it doesn't like being so hot, so it turns around all the time to cool off.

Eli: You know that stuff in your eye? It's Jell-o, and it can see stuff. I know, because I touched it.

Eli: There's a skeleton inside my body that talks to me and tells me all the things that are good.

Me: Eli, pull up your underpants, it's not polite to walk around with a bare bum.Eli: I don't have a bare bum, mum.Me: What exactly would you call it?Eli: A person bum.

Eli: Mum, will you button my pants and pull up my...um... bug?

Eli: Silas is such a little "Duke-ter." Me: What's a Duke-ter, Eli. Eli: Someone who eats all the 'Mo' so I can't have any.

Eli: Why is there toilet paper all over the yard. Me: 'Cause dumb teenagers didn't bother to find out if Auntie Phoebe was home or not, and now we have to clean it up. Eli: Grandma's going to be really mad. Let's eat them alive: crush their bones and drink their blood. (I promise, I don't know where he got that one.)

Eli (when I was wearing a dress that kind of makes me look preggers): Mommy, your 'mo' looks ugly when you have sisters in your tummy.

07 April 2012

When my Grandma Jackson was born, her parents had a certain, unknown, name picked out for her. In our church, early in a baby's life, a priesthood holder, usually the baby's father, gives the child a priesthood blessing, where they offer the baby's name for the records of the church. In 1912, in the southern Alberta Mormon community of Hillspring, that occasion was more than official enough to be the finite naming ceremony of any child. In any case, on the morning that my Grandma was to be named the name that her parents had picked, my great-grandfather sat in the church pew between his two older sons, waiting for the moment in the service where he would go up and name his youngest daughter and give her a priesthood blessing. Those two boys had decided that they knew better what their baby sister should be named, and while the other orders of business were being conducted in the meeting, they sat, reciting over and over the words to a Longfellow poem, "The Children's Hour" into their father's ears. When their father got up to give the blessing, and proceeded to state the name of his newborn daughter, he could not remember the name that he and his wife had picked, and could only remember the words of the poem:

"From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair."

And, with only the names from the poem in his head, he gave my grandma the name Edythe Allegra instead. Grandma was always so proud of her name, and loved the story of how her brothers had named her. If the little one inside me is a SHE, she will be named after her great-grandma. She will be Edythe.

And so, when I designed my first knit sweater, I just had to name it after my grandma. I've shown a few pictures of the sweater, and here it is, in all it's finality! I have learned a whole lot knitting this sweater, and writing up the pattern. I had twelve amazing women who tested my pattern and helped me through the process. Doing the test was so much fun, and my testers so willing to help. Who knew that knitting could be such an international experience: of the twelve there were one each from Belgium, Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal, the Ukraine, England, and from Canada, two from Norway, and three from the US. That's crazy! You can check out their incredible work by going to the pattern page on Ravelry, then clicking on the projects on the right hand side of the page. I can't thank these women enough.

I am currently NOT knitting anything new before the baby arrives, but I do have several other designs in my head, seeing as how this one was so much fun!

If you are interested in the pattern, it can be on Ravelry, or on Craftsy, as a PDF download, which will magically arrive in your inbox just as soon as you buy it. You can also just click here: You will love it, I promise!

2 comments:

Belle and John and all their 11 children are laughing about that morning right now! Grandma is saying how surprised she was and Uncle Don and Mac are taking all the credit. Mom would have loved that sweater to wear herself!